• Parsons: Facebook, YouTube Overvalued
    YouTube and Facebook, two of the Web's hottest acquisition targets, are overvalued at $1 billion, says Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons. For media companies seriously looking to acquire one of these Internet sensations, they would need to take a "big leap of faith" to pay current valuations, Parsons said in an interview. "Valuations put on those businesses that currently make no money are astronomical." Ever since News Corp. took MySpace for $580 million last year, traditional media companies have caught the acquisition bug. Instead of building new online services, they've decided it's more cost-effective to buy their way into online …
  • Facebook Flirts With Yahoo
    Over the past year, social-networking site Facebook has held talks with Yahoo, Microsoft and Viacom over a possible takeover. Now, the start-up is again holding serious talks with Yahoo about selling for approximately $1 billion. Ever since News Corp. scooped up MySpace parent Intermix for $650 million, the pursuit of the promise of sticky traffic and assessing the large numbers of users at social networks has become priority one for many large Internet companies. The social networks know that the Viacoms and Yahoos of the world won't be getting an established network for as cheap as News Corp. bought MySpace. …
  • Microsoft Late To Online Game
    Microsoft is so late to the game, sometimes it's not even worth talking about. Web search, this new music player, a new music service, MSN Spaces (which is supposed to be a social network)--and now, predictably, an online video service. Has Microsoft ever come out on top? Why does it even bother? YouTube, Guba, Revver, Google Video, Yahoo Video and AOL Video are already out there, and history illustrates that the company that gets to the masses early is almost always impossible to beat. In this build or buy Web 2.0 universe, News Corp. has already showed us that it's …
  • Do Yahoo Declines Signal Online Ad Slump?
    What does Yahoo's ad slump say about the health of the online ad market? Nothing, say analysts. Well, not exactly nothing, but Yahoo's decline in display advertising simply means the demand for Yahoo's inventory is lessening. Other compelling players have entered a market that badly needed new, high-traffic quality competitors to the big Web portals. Oh, and it is true that automotive and financial-services advertisers are cutting back on their ad spending, but online advertising is still booming. Shar Van Boskirk, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, predicts that online advertising will reach $17.4 billion this year, from $12.5 billion …
  • Endeca Is Google Of Corporate Intranet
    If you're in a large company, you've probably heard of Endeca, an enterprise search company that helps employees search corporate intranets. Fortune says their search software "makes Google's link-popularity algorithms look downright quaint by comparison." How is that? Endeca not only helps its users find things, it also helps them act on what they find. The search is only the beginning. According to an IDC research study, Fortune 100 companies--Endeca's core user base--waste $2.5 billion annually due to inability to locate and retrieve information. Managers at these firms spend at least 17 percent of their time (six weeks per year) …
  • Yahoo, Current TV Strike Web TV Partnership
    Yahoo has struck a forward-thinking alliance with Current TV, Al Gore's cable TV channel. The service will combine professional and user-generated video clips. Current's editors will have control over the content that airs on Yahoo's video site, weeding out videos containing offensive or copyrighted materials. Most clips will be preceded by a 15- or 30-second commercial, marking the first time Yahoo has included ads on user-generated content. It's a counterintuitive partnership for several reasons: For one thing, fierce Yahoo rival Google is a partner and investor in Current TV. For another, you'd think a cable TV show that centers around …
  • YouTube, Warner Deal Begins Site's Maturity
    "Finally, an old-media dinosaur gets it!" writes Peter Kafka of Forbes.com about YouTube's expanded deal with Warner Music Group. Kafka calls the deal a "coup for Warner," which he says is "taking great pains to convince investors that the Internet is an opportunity for the company, not a revenue destroyer." It's interesting, though, that Warner Music Group--one of the recording industry's big four--has chosen YouTube as its distribution partner for songs and music videos. Meanwhile, Warner's big competitors, EMI and Universal Music Group, have entered into distribution agreements with an ad-supported music start-up named SpiralFrog. UMG is also in talks …
  • Do We Want the Internet On TV?
    Could Apple Computer--which effectively reformed the music industry with the iPod--change the way we consume TV content? With its iTV device, Apple plans to bring cable TV and viral video clips to your living-room TV. If it works, "it will be because Mr. Jobs and others are realizing that content, not hardware, is still king." Is that it? Or does the sexy design and sleek user interface of Apple's products come into play? What about the clever way it's marketed? Then there's the consumer-choice factor: It's not that the content is great, it's the lack of barriers to it. YouTube …
  • Attorney General: Retain Customer Internet Records Longer
    U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Internet-service providers should preserve customers' Web surfing habits just in case the government needs them to fight child pornography. Interestingly, most big ISPs keep those records anyway, primarily because it's less expensive to store data than to discard it. Testifying before a Senate panel, Gonzales said the growing threat of child pornography was too great to be ignored, while acknowledging that users would be forced to concede more of their privacy rights. What privacy rights? It's hard to see where privacy comes into play anymore on the Internet, since Web companies have …
  • Luxury Brands Move Spending To Web
    Highly trafficked fashion Web sites are starting to lure major luxury brands, like Fendi, Valentino Fashion Group and Bottega Veneta, to the Web. Style.com, the online home of Vogue and W magazines, has sold its first set of video ads to Fendi, which jump out as a full-screen, 15-second video pop-up before showing Style.com's videos of new collections. This will appear just in time for the Italian fashion shows; Fashion Week in New York concluded last week. In all, Style.com lined up 88 advertisers plugging next season's spring dresses during Fashion Week--a 54 percent jump over last year. This marks …
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